Transportation officials tried to reassure local business owners today that the state has done everything possible to ease traffic congestion expected to increase when the northbound lanes of the Pulaski Skyway shut down for two years starting next month.

While the state officials’ assurances didn’t fall entirely on deaf ears, some business owners are still panicking about how the Skyway lane closures will affect the area, whether by causing employees to be late or by limiting the number of shoppers who come to Hudson County stores.

Brett Harwood, who owns a Journal Square parking garage that Harwood says is used by the area’s merchants, said the state is “minimizing” what will transpire after the closures begin.

“This is going to be chaos,” he said.

The shutdown, set to begin on Saturday, April 12, is part of the state Department of Transportation’s $1 billion rehabilitation of the aging bridge, which connects Newark and Kearny to Jersey City. The closures will allow crews to replace the bridge deck on both sides of the span.

Anthony Attanasio, a DOT community relations commissioner, said there’s “no easy way” to fix the bridge, which he said is safe to drive on now but needs extensive work to remain safe for decades to come.

“We lose sleep just like everyone else is losing sleep over this project,” Attanasio said.

Today’s presentation, made in a Downtown Jersey City office tower to about 20 business owners, didn’t contain much in the way of new information, though Harwood said he hadn’t heard before that the ramp from Jersey City’s Broadway onto and off the Skyway will be closed for the duration of the project. The ramp is being closed so an acceleration lane can be added there.

DOT officials believes most of the 3,500 cars the traverse the Skyway each hour will instead use the New Jersey Turnpike Extension, where a third lane will open up to accommodate the 1,900 extra cars the DOT believes will use that roadway.

Most of the rest of the drivers will use either the eastern spur of the Turnpike or Routes 1&9T, while about 100 cars will use either Route 7 or the Goethals Bridge, the DOT believes.